Tuesday, February 19, 2008

When Bill Clinton visits Cleveland, C-Notes has Bubba's back

Hey Bubba: Looks like the old lady’s got you doing the famous shake-your-first-loosely-in-a-swing-state thing. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself. But Toledo, Canton, Steubenville, Marietta -- these just aren’t locales built for a man that’s talked boobs over shark fin soup with Gorbachev and Mandela at Spielberg’s villa in St. Tropez. No wonder you’re getting testy.
That’s why you need to steer the old motorcade toward overcast Cleveland, a city after your own heart: slightly overweight and the butt of cheap, decades-old jokes. And to lure you, we’ve written up a full night’s itinerary—dinner, drinks and dancing. Just go ahead and give this to your chauffeur. And when you see us in the club, don't be afraid to say hello. Your secret is safe with us. ...
Dinner
Hot Sauce Williams Barbecue (7815 Carnegie Avenue, 216-391-2230)
After moving your offices to Harlem, you tore through the neighborhood’s famous soul-food restaurants with the glee of, well, a chubby rich guy from Arkansas discovering Harlem food. So Hot Sauce Williams is your joint. According to the Best of Cleveland award this rag handed it a few years back, “Cleveland's premier barbecue dynasty is also the only place to get a Polish Boy so good, it'll make you moan,” which is especially true when you get it to go and eat it in the back of your limo with Alicia, your new favorite intern.
Drinks
Nighttown (12387 Cedar Rd. 216-795-0550)
A Cleveland Heights staple and the winner of our 2007 Best Jazz award, classy Nighttown has hosted such luminaries as Benny Green, Eliane Elias, Kurt Elling, Joe Lovano, and Brad Mehldau. While we have no idea who those people are, the point is that you do, and are impressed. There’s no open mic night, alas, but that’s the glory of being the former Leader of the Free World: you make your own event.
Dancing
Motion Strip Club (620 Frankfort Ave., 216-344-3682)
After all that sax-playing, you’re going to want to sit back, relax, and expense some lap dances to Hillary’s campaign. We actually awarded Christie’s Best Strip Club in 2007, and little Motion was barely in the running. But after studying your past flings, we noticed a pattern emerging: they’re all slightly dumpy down-home women — sort of that “girl next door” thing, if you live next door to a Little Rock tire plant. So you should feel right at home in Motion on a Tuesday night, where the cover is $3, and you get what you pay for. Sure, a visit to a strip club at this point would spawn 17 book deals—one for everybody in the joint, including the drunk guy in the corner that thought you were Kiefer Sutherland—and put you back on couch duty for the next three years. But watching Tammy from Sandusky gyrate to “Baby Cause I’m a Thug” — so worth it. -- Gus Garcia-Roberts